Presented by Prof Clive Scott (UEA)

In thinking too exclusively about translation as a text-to-text transaction, we run the risk of overlooking larger questions: what kind of experience of language, what kind of perception of language, should literary translation seek to produce and promote? How might text-to-text translation act as the instrument of these broader ambitions? What sorts of argument would we wish to adduce, what sorts of method would we wish to cultivate, if we were to propose that translation’s underlying task is both the restoration of value to language and a re-definition of our relationship with language, and, through it, with the world? We perhaps need to better understand the ways in which current attitudes to translation are inhibiting, and deflect our attention from these horizons. But then we must further ask how we might wish to imagine literary translation’s future as a specific art, that is to say, not so much as the acquired art of translation but as the developing art of translational projection. These concerns will be explored both through practical example and with reference to the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Henri Bergson.

This event is free and open to all, registration is not required.